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Ex-CDC Chief Says, U.S. Could See 200,000 Cases a Day Within Four to Six Weeks; Trump Snubs George P. Bush on Endorsement after Ring-Kissing; Op-Ed Says, Vaccinated America Has Had Enough. Aired 7- 7:30a ET

Aired July 27, 2021 - 07:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[07:00:01]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAY: The humiliation of George P. Bush after apparently begging for an endorsement from Donald Trump, he didn't get it. Why didn't he see this coming?

KEILAR: AND fresh off his trip to space, he wants more. Jeff Bezos is now setting his sights on the moon with an aggressive new move.

BERMAN: All right. Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. It is Tuesday, July 27th.

Coronavirus cases exploding and the former director of the CDC warnings that the next month-and-a-half is going to be painful.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. TOM FRIEDEN, FORMER CDC DIRECTOR: We're heading into a rough time. It's likely if our trajectory is similar to that in the United Kingdom that we could see as many as 200,000 cases a day, four times our current rate within another four to six weeks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: That would be horrible. The seven-day average is now higher than 55,000. One month ago, it was about 12,000.

Some cities and government agencies springing into action. In New York, all city workers now required to get vaccinated or be tested once a week. The same goes for California. The V.A., the Veterans Affairs, now requiring its frontline health care workers to be vaccinated. This is a big deal. Why? Because the V.A. is now the first federal agency to require vaccinations.

KEILAR: And the Justice Department is weighing in here. They say that it is legal to mandate vaccines, even if vaccines only have emergency use authorization. And more federal agencies could be joining suit here. The city's of Provincetown, Massachusetts, of course, in the middle of tourist season, Savannah, Georgia, St. Louis as well, announcing new requirements for indoor masking.

Florida is now the epicenter of this surge we are seeing. Cases have more than tripled in the past few weeks and every county in the state now has high levels of community transmission.

CNN went inside one Florida hospital where COVID patients are pleading for vaccines after contracting the virus.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TAMMY DANEIL, CHIEF NURSING OFFICER, BAPTIST HEALTH: We're getting ready to intubate the patient in the ICU, which means putting them on a ventilator, and they say if I get the vaccine now, could I not go on the ventilator? So, I mean, they are begging for it.

FRANCISCA, COVID PATIENT: I feel bad.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Bad?

FRANCISCA: Yes, I cannot breathe good. I have shortness of breath. I feel sorry about not getting a vaccine.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You're sorry you didn't get the vaccine? Do you think you would be here if you had gotten the vaccine?

FRANCISCA: No.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: All right. Joining me now is Politico Reporter Gary Fineout, who has spent the past two decades covering Florida politics. Gary, it's tough to hear from those patients in that Jacksonville hospital. It's tough to see the numbers right now in the state that you cover so closely.

I want to talk to you about -- there is a little political angle here, which is that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has staked out clear territory here. He's got these accuse koozies out, in statements that say, don't Fauci my Florida, coming out against any kind of coronavirus restrictions and really critical ones that existed in the past. He signed, you know, a measure which makes it basically illegal to mandate vaccinations in businesses. He said, in Florida, your personal choice regarding vaccinations will be protected and no business or government entity would be able to deny you services based on your decision.

So has DeSantis, I guess, painted himself into a corner here?

GARY FINEOUT, REPORTER, POLITICO: Well, I mean, his basic premise has been that he has felt that he has been mostly right, and that, as you know, he's kind of railed against the media and railed against health experts and has insisted that some of the things that have come out have not been correct.

And so I think at this point in time, I don't see any signs of him changing his stance. In fact, he had a roundtable yesterday at the capitol that the media was not informed about in which he basically had an hour-long discussion about why mask mandates were wrong for schools. And so, yes, I think the governor is dug in, and I don't see that changing anytime soon because it's -- frankly, it's, you know, elevated him to the top of the presidential candidates for 2024 by his stances.

BERMAN: What proactive measures then is he or could he take to battle this clear surge in Florida?

FINEOUT: Well, I mean, I think it is important to note that he did -- and he did this yesterday and he's done this last week, he stressed that vaccines do help, that they will keep people from getting seriously ill.

[07:05:03]

So he is communicating that message.

Now, what we have seen interestingly enough is that, early on, earlier this year, in January and February, he was very much hyping up the need to get vaccinated and was setting up pop-up sites and everything like that. And in the last couple of months, as the numbers began to wane in terms of cases, that messaging has kind of been replaced by other sort of red meat Republican issues that he had been emphasizing.

So I think the question is should Florida be doing more to emphasize vaccinations and I know, of course, there are a lot of critics, including people who are Democrats, who have said, no, he's not doing enough.

BERMAN: I do wonder or one does wonder to what extent this could undermine his Florida is a coronavirus success story platform, which you know, I think, to an extent, he has already been running on on the national scene.

FINEOUT: Right. And, I mean, he himself has called this a seasonal change. Now, I understand there are medical experts who sort of dispute his framing of it that way. But he flat-out predicted that the case counts would go down in August. So I guess we'll just have to see whether or not his prognostication is, in fact, correct.

But like I said, there are some things he has been right on the in the past, and then there are other things he's wrong on. So, yes, I mean, right now, he is staking a lot on this. And as you pointed out, the (INAUDIBLE), so now he has more control over what the state can do.

BERMAN: Right, and not do, which I think is actually, at this point, you know, more applicable because I don't think we're going to see vaccine mandates or local jurisdictions or businesses do that, and, obviously, I don't think we'll see more masking in Florida at this point, right?

FINEOUT: Well, yes, no. What's interesting is that, yesterday, a couple of local communities have started to place on mask mandates for their local facilities, like city-owned property. Basically, of course, right now, because of the change in law, if a community were to declare a local public health emergency and then try to enact measures, such as a mask mandate, the governor has the veto power, he could stop them.

So, yes, I mean, the local governments are somewhat limited in the response that they could do as a result of changes pushed through by the Republican-controlled legislature and the governor.

BERMAN: Yes. Look, the virus doesn't care about politics. That's one thing we know for sure. Gary Fineout, I know you do, you cover it so well in Florida. We appreciate you being with us this morning. Thank you very much.

FINEOUT: Thank you.

BERMAN: Former FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn says that full FDA approval of COVID-19 vaccines could help get more Americans vaccinated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: If the FDA were to approve this vaccine, it would make a difference for people?

DR. STEPHEN HAHN, FORMER FDA COMMISSIONER: Yes, I think it would. You know, the FDA's stamp of approval, the gold standard.

I think the data with the FDA, they're probably having a give and take with the companies about it. And they'll do a great job at looking at those data. We depend upon them to do that thoroughly, and that's what they're doing now. I think it will make a difference.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: All right. joining us now, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Sanjay, if they can help, what's the hold up?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. When you talk about the approval process, typically, you have to have a certain amount of data. Remember with the emergency use authorization, they wanted at least three months worth of data. And back then, people were saying, what's the hold up here? This is taking too long, and I'm talking about the end of last year. But they got it done, and some of those authorizations came in December.

Now, they're saying they want six months worth of data, so January through June. Pfizer has submitted that data. Moderna is starting to submit that data. And what we're hearing is that the approval is likely going to come by the end of next month. Maybe it should be going faster. I think that, you know, most people think it should be going faster. But this is as fast as it's ever gone. You've got to look at lots of data.

You've also got to look at the manufacturing facilities to make sure that they're going to be able to manufacture it at the scale that's going to be needed over the next years. We'll start to see ads on television. Once there's an approval process, they got to go through that process. So, there's all of these different things. But that's sort of how it's -- you know, when we talk to our sources who are looking at this process from the inside, that's what it looks like, and probably end of August, sometime end of August, that's probably when we're going to see those approvals.

KEILAR: Sanjay, do you think that having that full approval is going to change how we see vaccine mandates being put forward? We're already seeing some companies say you have to be vaccinated if you want to come back to work. We're seeing that at the V.A., we're seeing that at hospitals. Will the full approval mean we see more vaccine mandates?

GUPTA: Yes, I think so. You know, as you point out, you can do it now. The mandates can go in place now with an authorization, but there are many institutions that are more hesitant to do that or they get a lot of push back, saying don't do that until there's approval.

[07:10:07]

So I think the mandates, universities, things like that will become more easily done.

I think with regard to individuals, it's interesting, and, you know, we have been following this along for some time. And what you find out of the people who are not vaccinated now, what impact would approval versus authorization have on them. And, again, this is polling data, so it's always hard to sort of parse it out, but they say about 16 percent of that remaining unvaccinated population would then be pushed over the edge to go from, okay, I didn't get it, and now I will get it because of the approval versus the authorization. We'll see what it actually, you know, plays out to be, but that's roughly the numbers.

BERMAN: So, Sanjay, we're getting some new information from your unit, the health unit here, that a decision on new mask guidance for the vaccinated is imminent. This is a big deal now because fully vaccinated people have been told we don't need to wear masks, right, basically. But as the delta variant explodes, there have been new questions about whether or not this might change.

What do you expect might happen?

GUPTA: Well, you know, if you go back to May, first of all, when the guidance changed, where they basically said vaccinated people no longer needed to wear masks indoors, a lot of people were surprised by that, okay? Even within the public health community, even people who were close to the White House were surprised by that. Many people believe that masking as a mitigation measure could be the last thing to be lifted. Why? It's so easy to do, it's so effective. Nevertheless, that happened.

Over the last couple of months, we have seen what's happened with the numbers overall. As you point out, John, it got down to just under 12,000 new cases per day. By the way, if we'd gotten to 10,000 or lower, we would have been officially in containment mode in this country, feel like we could actually get our hands around this thing. We got tantalizingly close to that, didn't quite get it. It's gone up several fold since then, and I think that that's prompted these discussions.

And I think that there are strong feelings about this on both sides. The CDC has been pretty steadfast in saying we're not going to change the guidance but, obviously, we know the delta variant is far more transmissible, and also that when you do develop an infection with the delta variant, the amount of virus that you're carrying in your system is up to a thousand fold higher than with the original strain. So even if people aren't getting as sick from it and the vaccines still remain very protective, they are carrying a lot more virus that could potentially make them more transmissible.

So, I think that's fueling these discussions, and we'll see. I think over the next day or so, we may hear some new guidance about indoors masking even for the vaccinated.

KEILAR: There were valid questions, maybe still are, about that decision on masking, if it was to incentivize vaccinations, that in the balance of things, if that was a good way to get people vaccinated because health officials say that is what was most important. Do you think that if there is this new guidance for masking for the vaccinated it will, you know, be a disincentive for vaccines?

GUPTA: It's a great question, Brianna. First of all, you know, we did see an uptick in vaccinations after that decision was made. So to the extent that they perceived it would be an incentive, there was some evidence that it was an incentive. You'd even see an uptick. Now, obviously, vaccination rates have gone down. We can show you what vaccinations have been doing over the past several weeks and months. They have clearly come down.

But I don't know, Brianna. It's tough to know how people are going to react. I think it's going to be a blow psychologically a little bit, you know, to basically say, hey, look, we're stutter stepping a bit. We said you don't need to wear masks. Now we're saying you need to wear masks again. There are going to be people upset about that, and it may feel like we're taking a step backwards even with regard to our progress.

But this is the way the science is sort of leading us. If you look, overall, the trajectory of the pandemic, you know, we have had these waves, this delta wave is potentially very concerning, you know? And I think that we have lessons we have just learned from last year. We don't want to be making these decisions after the fact, because at that point, you can start to go into exponential growth, and that's really hard to control. So if we can get ahead of it, which is what I think is the discussions all revolve around, it could make a huge difference.

BERMAN: Look, and as Michael (INAUDIBLE) and others have pointed out, to a certain extent, we have been pushed into a corner where the country has to govern for the unvaccinated, right? Everyone might have to mask up again because the unvaccinated people should have been wearing masks all along have not been. They took it as an invitation to keep those masks off.

Sanjay, you just got back from Tokyo. A tough turnaround, I should say, for the Olympics. What did you learn while you were there?

GUPTA: Well, they're in a state of emergency, okay?

[07:15:01]

So, just to give you sense, I mean, you have a lot of excitement from the Olympics, you have a lot of anxiety there. It's a tale of two cities in Tokyo right now. We can show you a bit about what the numbers have been doing in Tokyo. They have been going up. I mean, Japan was a place that was sort of held up as an example of a country that's doing things well. The numbers are starting to go up over there, and, therefore, it's really locked down, John.

To be -- you know, you've covered a lot of stories like this, to get out and about, you had to be escorted everywhere. We got tested every day. I got tested 96 hours before I left, 72 hours before I left at the airport, at the hotel every day. It's really pretty locked down.

But let me give you a little bit of context. I think this is interesting. So, Tokyo in a state of emergency, the number of cases per day, I want you to compare that now to other cities and see where they stand to give you an idea what the level at which someone goes into a state of emergency, Tokyo, 11 per 100,000, okay? These are other cities now, Miami, 58 per 100,000.

This is just context, right? When you're in Tokyo, we're locked down, 11 per 100,000, unacceptable, we're not going to tolerate this. What level of cases, new cases gets you to that point in the United States or, frankly, in other cities around the world? That's going to be a conversation.

But also vaccine hesitancy. Right now, they clearly have a supply issue. They have got 22 percent of their country vaccinated. They wish they had their vaccines. There's long lines for vaccines and not enough to vaccinate as quickly as they would like despite the fact that they're doing it quickly.

I talked to the Japanese vaccine sort of minister about this, what did they anticipate and what he told me I thought was really fascinating. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA: So I have been surprised, Minister, in the United States about how politicized everything has become, from wearing a mask to getting a vaccine. It's really been quite striking actually. I'm curious about here. Have you dealt with some of those same things?

TARO KONO, JAPAN'S MINISTER IN CHARGE OF COVID-19 VACCINATIONS: There are some people who are against the vaccine. If you look at their Twitter account, many of them have President Trump's photo on it. So they are trying to follow what President Trump's supporters are doing in the United States. I mean, they are all Japanese, but they openly say they support President Trump, and they say, we don't need the masks, we don't need the vaccine. And that's a bit strange to me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA: That I didn't expect. I mean, vaccine hesitancy is something countries deal with all over the world, some countries more than others, but the ripple effect now of this political situation in the United States, a country that is 4 percent of the world's population, on countries on the other side of the globe, that was quite striking.

So, they are going to deal with vaccine he hesitancy as well. In part, again, some of that existed pre-pandemic in all these countries, but it's been amplified all over the world, even in a place like Japan.

BERMAN: A U.S. export that I think we shouldn't be proud of. Sanjay Gupta, great to see you this morning, glad to have you back.

GUPTA: Thank you.

KEILAR: And new this morning, Donald Trump snubbing his favorite Bush, as he puts it, despite weeks of wooing, kissing the ring, quite frankly, sucking up to Trump in what appeared to be an effort to get his endorsement, George P. Bush doesn't have it. Instead, Trump is backing Ken Paxton in the race for attorney general in Texas.

Bush, of course, is the son of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. He met recently with Trump in New York. He even had a campaign koozie that was made. A source telling CNN that during that meeting, Trump assured him that he would stay out of the race. That was never going to happen though.

Another source comparing the situation to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This time I'm going to kick that football clear to the moon.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Isn't it peculiar, Charlie Brown, how some traditions just slowly fade away.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Charlie Brown, of course, the George P. Bush in that situation there.

Joining us now is S.E. Cupp, CNN Political Commentator, to talk about this.

I mean, wow, revenge best served cold like a beer in a koozie, I guess.

S.E. CUPP, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I know. It really is, though, just another in a long line of humiliations for suck-ups who would, you know, bow at the feet of Donald Trump in hopes for some of his crumbs, and really only to be left kind of emasculated.

[07:20:05] I mean, George P. is, I think, one of the worst examples because he literally got nothing out of it. I mean, even Donald Trump saying nothing until a little bit later in the primary would have been better than this. But, you know, everyone, from Marco Rubio to Ted Cruz, to Rand Paul, to Lindsey Graham, Ben Carson. I mean, Donald Trump went after Ben Carson's religion. He's gone after these guys' families.

I don't know anything more personal than your faith or your family, and yet all of these guys decided staying in power or getting power was more important than, like, pride, was more important than dignity and principles. And I think what you witnessed George P. really putting power ahead of principles and pride.

BERMAN: And putting koozies right in the center of it all. I mean, obviously, it's campaign paraphernalia, and it's not this side that's the doozey here. Let's wait so we could see the other side.

KEILAR: Doozey on the koozie?

BERMAN: the doozey on the koozie. This, he's got like a little picture of Donald Trump where Trump is bragging about how George P. is the one Bush that he likes, and you know, the George P. Bush campaign puts this out. It's just -- I mean, it's got to sting.

CUPP: Yes. I mean, to me, like I said, and I've said this for five years, the word is emasculation. This is emasculating. What George P. did in deference to Trump was not high-minded, it wasn't about principles. And this was literally putting a dumb quote and a cartoon on a koozie in hopes that that would reach this guy and get him to kind of just, at the very least, back off in the race. I don't think George P. ever expected to get Trump's endorsement. But being about ten points behind Paxton, you kind of just wanted him to hold off.

And so, I mean, this is the great feat of Donald Trump, how he has so emasculated the GOP and continues to even though he's out of office and most recently lost spectacularly. I mean, I just -- it's so humiliating and embarrassing.

BERMAN: I wonder if George P. will end up thanking Trump, I mean, for this at this point, because, you know, what else can he do? Thank you, Mr. Trump, for even considering the endorsement, sir.

CUPP: Well, yes. I mean, that's where this has left to go. I think the interesting thing would have been if George P. had embarked on this fun experiment where he shows another conservative lane, a lane that was not Trump. He wasn't going to out-trump Ken Paxton, and Paxton is under some investigations.

I think George P. could have taken him on on those things had he not also been begging for the endorsement of a guy who was also under lots of investigations. We'll never know how that would have gone because George P. did not decide to take that route. And so here's what he's left with, really just a lousy nickname, my Bush.

KEILAR: Yes. If he wanted to raise questions about Paxton's character, well, he ended up just raising questions about his own, as you point out. S.E. Cupp, thank you so much, always wonderful to see you.

And up next, there is growing frustration over vaccine hesitancy. Our next guest says vaccinated America has had enough.

BERMAN: Plus, we're hours away from the first hearing, the first House select committee hearing into the January 6th insurrection, what Minority Leader McCarthy is now calling the Republicans on that committee.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:25:00]

KEILAR: It's been more than six months since the COVID-19 vaccine started to roll out across the country, yet a minority of unvaccinated adults are making life riskier for everyone and extending they are length of the pandemic. In a new piece in The Atlantic, David Frum declared that, quote, vaccinated America has had enough. He goes on to write, experts list many reasons for the vaccine slump, but one big reason stands out, vaccine resistance among conservative, evangelical and rural Americans, pro-Trump America has decided that vaccine refusal is a statement of identity and a test of loyalty.

Former Speech Writer for President George W. Bush and Staff Writer for The Atlantic David Frum is with us now.

And, David, you say that there is a breaking point for Americans, for vaccinated Americans. What do you think that is?

DAVID FRUM, STAFF WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: I think you could feel it in the air last week, which was when The Atlantic published this piece. To this point, we'd had this big slowdown in vaccination over the summer. And through the early part of the summer, the mood was one of coaxing, one of inducement. Would you like a lottery ticket, would you like free beer, maybe some other inducement, maybe money, maybe as much as a thousand dollars if you will take the shot, but none of that worked.

And you could feel last week, as people who had done their civic duty, got themselves vaccinated to protect themselves and others realized, what, the delta variant may force me to remask, may mess with my kids' fall term, something has to change. And that mood, I think, is really crystallized and you can see it in actions by states and localities around the country, and private businesses too.

KEILAR: So what has to change? Because you sort of talk about that change in tone that you have to use compassionate first when you're talking to people who are unvaccinated but that eventually you have people who are choosing in the name of personal responsibility and personal choice not to get vaccinated, and that's obviously affecting other people, not just them. So what needs to be done?

[07:30:00]

FRUM: well, we are going to move from a world of incentives to a world of disincentives.